Scars
by Blue Eyes At Night
Summary: ANOTHER SKate songfic, Kate centric. Best oneshot since Come As You Are. lyrics by Papa Roach...Maybe Sawyer would always be her favorite scar...


A/N- HEY EVERYONE! I am SO excited, I am at THREE Lost Communities….I was even INVITED to one! That's the first invite I've gotten in three years….and my muse is back! No more crappy stories! Yay!

So…this is Kate Centric. This is on par with Come As You Are, the only one of the quadruplets of one-shots that I feel is as good as that first one.

Thanks to everyone in all three places Lost-Forum, and Lost Diaries) for their support, you guys are the greatest fandom in the world.

**Lyrics by Papa Roach**

**Scars**

_I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut _

_My weakness is that I care too much _

_My scars remind me that the past is real _

_I tear my heart open just to feel…_

Sometimes she had to sneak away at night, stuff an old tee-shirt in her mouth and just scream. For a life-or-death situation, the island was starting to feel _a lot_ like High School. After all there were the fights, the cliques, the pretty girl dating the nerdy guy to piss off the guy she teases, the druggie, the pregnant girl, the crazy old loon with a certain penchant for befriending young boys, the would-be Boy Scout, the bad ass and the _constant_ sexual tension between all factions.

It was more then the tension between everyone, it was attachment. They were like a little family now, a little community. After so much time, so many hardships, you couldn't just tear yourself away from everyone around you. Kate couldn't decide it that was a blessing or a curse. She hadn't been around people in so long…at least not a group like this. It'd been a long time since she'd had friends. Since she'd had _family_.

And it made running away harder.

The problem was, she had to run. As soon as Michael began building the raft she could feel the souls of her feet getting itchy. People thought that was a figurative thing, itchy feet. Nope. At least not in Kate's case, they were more of a warning: _Time to go, pack up your things and lock the door_. It wasn't like she wanted to run, she had to run. As soon as she got the chance she'd have to hightail it away from these people she loved as fast as humanly possible. Faster if she could manage it.

She had terrible nightmares about it, then she had nights where she couldn't sleep and she'd sneak off with those old shirts in hand. Visions of seeing the broken hearted faces of these people that she loved, people that loved her back, watching her run away like a coward…like a thief in the night. And it was love, that bond between them all. The kind of love that emergencies birth. Well, mostly that brand anyway.

…_I'm pissed cause you came around _

_Why don't you just go home _

_Cause you channel all your pain _

_And I can't help you fix yourself _

_You're making me insane…_

When she got into one of these fights of melancholy, the last thing she wanted was company. The problem with the island was, it was so small that even if someone wasn't near you, they were still there.

Or maybe Sawyer would've been with her even if she were on Mars.

Sawyer…she didn't have a word for what he made her feel. Though in the mood she was in angry suited just fine. They were the only two people on the island carved from the same wayward star, the only two outsiders in the in-crowd. Ever since hearing that she was not the only person who had landed on this rock with a murder under their belt, she had felt closer to him. She had already felt close to him, but now she knew why. They were the same.

Yet they couldn't have been more different with how they dealt with their problems. Kate was a runner through and through. Something doesn't work out then you move on and start again. Her life fit into a backpack and a broken heart, and she had become adept at surviving with those two elements half-empty. The last thing she wanted from her past was to confront it, she never liked what she saw etched in the stone of all the years behind her.

But Sawyer thrived on it. He couldn't relinquish his grip on the past. He clung to the letter he had written when he was seven as though it were a life line and he were drowning. Come to think of it, that was probably close to the truth. Drowning in grief he still hadn't faced, drowning in hate that he had become what he hunted, Sawyer had nothing but the hope that he could fix everything by fixing the past.

He just hadn't accepted that the past was done.

It made her want to shake some sense into his thick skull every time she saw him caress the letter-bearing pocket like a lover. When he looked at that gun as though it were a flaming sword to smite the wicked, she just wanted to smack him until he learned. She wanted to scream into his ear how it was useless, what was done was done and there's nothing, _nothing, **NOTHING**_ he could do.

It drove her crazy, seeing him so lost.

Or maybe it pissed her off so bad because what she wanted was for him to run away with her.

…_I saw you going down _

_But you never realized _

_That you're drowning in the water _

_So I offered you my hand _

_Compassions in my nature _

_Tonight is our last stand…_

Every time that she flirted with him she told herself 'This is the end, no more of this'. Then she would see him flick that lazy smile at her and she couldn't help but give him one back.

Between Sawyer and her damn feet she felt like a caged lion in a circus, just pacing the cage until she had to perform. And that's what normalcy was for her, a performance. The domesticity of the island was all an act, it was just robotic movements for her. Gather food, gather water, wash clothes, gather more food, gather more water, make fire, sleep. Only two people on this camp had seen her without the mask, and only one of them knew it.

That day at the waterfall with Sawyer had been so….liberating. Until the demons from the past came back in the form of the damned Marshall's suitcase. For the first time since they'd landed, she was as brash, spunky, and natural as she had been before the sky started falling.

The thing that she recalled most about that day, the last night before she began screaming her frustrations into dirty shirts, was being completely encompassed by water. It was just Sawyer and her, alone and confined. He had reached out to touch her, how did he know just where she was so ticklish?

It was that one perfect moment before the suitcase and the corpses. She would have happily drowned in that perfect moment with him, the only person on that island that made it perfect. The absence of that happiness, the absence of _him_, stung like an open wound. The kind of wound that never leaves.

In all the years she'd been running, she'd acquired a lot of scars. Hiking, falling, shooting, swimming, working; you name it and it had left some permanent memento on her body. Some of them had been pretty serious, but none of them had ever stung like this. Maybe she was an idiot for leaving her heart open for that kind of pain, maybe it wasn't her choice. Maybe she couldn't ease the hurt if she tried. Maybe she didn't really _want_ to lose that perfect pain

Maybe Sawyer would always be her favorite scar.

…_our scars remind us that the past is real _

_I tear my heart open just to feel…_

A/N- WOOHOO! I like it, I felt like I got alittle of topic but that's been my life as of late. I like this one. I mean I LIKE this one. So pleased with it.

How about you readers, you like?

REVIEW PLEASE!


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